Stonington Reports 'Early Voting Ballot Issue'

STONINGTON, CT — The town has released a statement after an apparent mix-up during early voting.

The Town of Stonington posted the following on its website:

Please find below an important message from the Stonington Registrars of Voters. If you voted in-person at the Police Department Community room on Tuesday October 22nd please be sure you read the below, and if you are able, please return to the Police Department Community room to discard your previous ballot and cast a new ballot, in case you were one of the voters who inadvertently received an incorrect ballot. Please note, this does not apply to Absentee Ballots nor early voting on Monday the 21st or Wednesday the 23rd. We apologize for this and thank you for your understanding.
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During early voting on Tuesday afternoon in Stonington it was discovered that some ballots were mixed-up at one check-in station between two voting districts that involved the 41st and 43rd House Districts.

We were unable to pinpoint how many ballots were involved. We heard from one voter that he had received the incorrect ballot. We did not hear from anyone else.

Once the issue was discovered all the ballots were double checked going forward to ensure that the right ballots were given out to voters.

On Wednesday the process for checking-in and receiving ballots was changed to ensure this mistake does not happen again. All check-in personnel are now also double checking the ballots being provided to voters.

We notified the Secretary of the State’s Office on Tuesday evening and were in communication throughout the day Wednesday.

Wednesday evening the Secretary of the State’s Office shared the plan for addressing this mistake and we will be working diligently to contact every voter who cast an early vote on Tuesday October 22nd to return, void their original ballot and vote on the correct ballot for their District. If a voter does not return to the early voting location to vote on the correct ballot, the original ballot will be honored and counted per proper procedure.